This was a $1/$3 NLHE game I played last night at the casino.

MP - Reg ($310) is a nerdy Asian guy in his mid 20's who plays fairly tight and shows down decent hands. He's moderately aggressive, but he'll often limp with low pocket pairs and suited connectors. Overall he's a pretty good player.

UTG - Whale ($500) is a mid 40's white guy and is one of the worst players I've ever seen. His VPIP/PFR is probably about 90/0 and he'll often showdown hands like 96s in massive pots. It's typical to see him limp/call a large raise with a hand like 52s or Q2o and he hates folding pairs postflop.

CO - Hero ($800) is an early 20's white guy with a very LAGtard table image. Hero has been caught bluffing multiple times and will sometimes overbet for value (especially against the whale). Hero Cbets almost every flop and generally barrels his draws. Hero attempts to balance his bluffing range by making a lot of thin value bets postflop. Hero has also been 3betting a lot preflop and players are starting to adjust by flatting his 3bets with a wide range of hands (but rarely do players 4bet hero).

Hero is dealt 9h 9s

SB posts $1
BB posts $3
Whale limps in for $3
2 folds
Reg raises to $15
1 fold
Hero 3bets to $50
4 folds (surprisingly the whale folded for once)
Reg calls $35

$97 in pot (2 players)
Flop is Qh Th 3h

Reg checks
Hero Cbets $75
Reg shoves all-in for $260
Hero ???

It's $185 more to win a pot of $612 (after rake). This means that I need 30% equity to make a breakeven call. What range of hands do you think that villain is check/shoving here and do I have enough equity to call this?

Also, did I play correctly preflop and flop, bearing in mind that I was up against both a TAG (MP) and a whale (UTG)?

Unless I'm reading something wrong I don't think there is 600 in the pot, and I would fold here even if there was


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This is what the pot size would be after I call and after rake has been taken out. It makes it much easier to calculate pot odds that way, since you can just do (185/612)*100 = 30.2% equity required to breakeven, rather than doing the whole "okay so there's $97 in the pot currently, plus my $75, plus his $75, plus $185 more..."

This is a ****ty spot. Why not just play that in position and draw the whale in? I just don't understand why we need to make life difficult by making a move on the reg and crowding the whale out even if he often calls here...99 is still pretty vulnerable. I just feel like there's easier ways to make money.

My guess is you have 2 outs and I would fold.

If you had 2 outs 50% of the time (vs overpair with a heart) and 11 outs the other 50% (vs overpair with no heart), you still dont have enough equity to call.

CALL PRE.

X/f flop.

This is a pretty bad flop for you and you take a line that turns a hand with some value into a complete bluff that is never folding out better.

Answer this: what range are you expecting to get called by and do you have >50% equity versus that range? If not, don't bet.

Take the free card and see what develops on the turn.

I play this differently and just overcall to start with. We have position on the guy, we're getting odds to setmine and 99 is strong enough that to make some moves with even without hitting. We can make a tight (predictable) player pretty miserable if he misses the flop.

Also, if we do hit our set, we get paid by overpairs, which are exactly the hands that 4bet over our 3bet pre. It's going to completely suck to have to fold 99 when he signals his range is QQ+/AK by banging it back up to $125.

3! Here is like the worst option. When we get 4! We have to fold, when we get called, were rarely going to see a flop that were thrilled about

Even if the whale calls, what do you expect to do on the flop? We only flop a set so often, yet we're going to have middle pair or worse on over 50% of flops, vs a range that called a 3!. Was your plan to iso the whale and hope he calls 3 streets with like 3rd pair for you to win??

I'm flatting pre personally. 99/TT are a couple of hands I like to keep in my calling range for balance reasons. Also, in this hand I don't want to give the whale an opportunity to fold.

When the TAG opponent flats the 3bet pre, to me it caps his range at QQ/AK. I doubt he is calling with small pocket pairs to set mine, but TT is possible.

Calling a raise OOP as a tag player is counter-intuitive to the strategy in general so it must be a hand that is too strong to fold but not strong enough to shove pf. Maybe there is an arguement for V holding AA/KK to keep you in the hand.

I just don't see him flipping over any hand where you have 30% equity other than AhKh, and against the range as a whole I'm not going with it on this hand.

Absolutely terrible 3bet. Honestly folding pre is probably better than 3betting. Calling was obviously the best play

Obviously fold now. And probably don't cbet either. You couldn't have played this worse. Were you on tilt?

3betting here can be okay, typically people at llsnl call to a lot of 3bets and rarely 4bet, flop seems like a mandatory check though, would hate to have to fold to a x/r and betting doesnt really accomplish anything here other than maybe not turning our hand somewhat face up

I'm mostly a lurker but sometimes you read these hand histories and from the description of the hero you can almost tell they are in trouble in the hand because they try to do too much. This was one of those times.

IMO, you might not even have 2 outs here. Fold and be pissed you put $100 into this hand like this.

On the actual hand I can see 3b if you are trying to iso the fish but once he folds and the reg calls the hand changes drastically. IMO the c bet is the real mistake. Why c-b that board? What part of the regs 3b call range folds? C-betting just puts money in the pot for hands that beat you or opens the door for him to shove his draws which you can't really call. It just seems like you are on auto bet pilot with the blinders on.

Also, what kind of range does V have you on here?
What hands c/r shove that range?

3! a linear range vs. a loose player that calls 3!'s OOP nearly 100% of the time is the right adjustment to make. Unfortunately the villain described in OP is a complete mirror opposite of the type we want to 3! for value.

I agree hero made mistakes at every single decision point in this hand and should use it as a learning lesson for the future. Fold, move on and erase whatever in your thought process convinced you to take this line.

At loose tables where it is typically very difficult to isolate a single whale, I'm more for just seeing a flop for cheap multiway, hitting, and then attempting to take the whale's stack postflop; we only have to take his stack a mere once per session for this method to be extremely profitable. So I'd much rather flat the open and invite the whale into the pot. Blowing the whale out preflop is really meh, and then the chance of getting 4bet by the opener (who can't be raising light with the whale at the table) sucks even more.

As played, I might even check behind this flop. At the very least the opponent has a gutshot, and if he has a heart he has a flush draw to go with it, otherwise he's smashing this flop unless he has like 88.

As played, easy fold.

GimoG

You are also really going to annoy this reg by pulling moves that blow the whale out of the pot when reg clearly has a hand to target the whale with.

What goes around comes around so next time you're targeting a whale with a wider than usual value range you can't complain if this reg wades in and ruins your hand for you.

Yes it's good to stop anyone else winning the whale's stack but there is a balance to be found between getting at whale stack first and avoiding a reg war.